Thursday, March 27, 2008

CLASSIC BITS: Woody Allen

During last year's Comedians of Comedy show at The TLA, Eugene Mirman did a bit making fun of a ska/reggae band that had messaged him on Myspace. He played one of their songs and as a way to insult them, said that it is what he thinks about when he wants to hold out in the middle of the dirty dance in the sack. "Sorry, baseball," he concluded.

A reference to a Woody Allen joke? Maybe, maybe not. And did the audience laugh because they got the reference? Maybe, maybe not.

Nevertheless, here is Woody Allen performing that bit. It's part of the track "Second Marriage" and was recorded in San Francisco in 1968 for debut album, Woody Allen, which was re-packaged on a two LP set The Nightclub Years 1964-1968 in 1972 by United Artists Records and then as part of a single CD, Standup Comic, by Rhino Records in 1999. This is only a portion of the specific track and you should really buy the CD if you want all 25 tracks.









Woody Allen's stand-up demeanor was very much like in his films: the ultimate neurotic and completely self-conscious. Always talking about himself, he seems vulnerable but always in control. In the 1960s, he was a unique stand-up character, according to Gerald Nachman in his book Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s:

The waiflike Allen's mere presence on a nightclub stage in the early 1960s was in itself funny, even startling. He exuded what one writer termed a "wistful futility"; critics referred to his "lemur-like" visage. Apart from Wally Cox, there had never been anybody in nightclubs who remotely resembled Allen, a pipsqueak with the chutzpah to invade the territory that had for decades been the province of brassy guys in tuxes. Even Mort Sahl, who altered the stand-up dress code and elevated the intelligence quotient, was brash and frenzied. Woody Allen was none of that. He looked like a bookworm in a green corduroy suit who, blinking at the light, seemed to have just crawled out from the library stacks, unprepared to meet the world.

Yet something unlemur-like happened when Allen stumbled onstage and began to talk. People paid attention, if only out of curiosity. Audiences took pity on him. Anyone who saw Allen in those first weeks at the tiny room upstairs in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex must have thought, There seems to be some mistake, and wondered what time the real comedian came on. He wasn't a wuss, like Cox and Jackie Vernon, who traded on meekness. If you felt sorry for him, it was only because he was so uneasy onstage. But the strenth of his jokes sustained him over those first shaky months, when Ralph J. Gleason wrote warily, "Woody Allen might be worth hearing more than once."
RELATED: Woody Allen performing another classic, "The Moose" on English television in 1965.

1 comment:

梁爵 said...

2020.03.29
會選擇上午場酒店工作的小姐們 梁曉尊/梁小尊 劃出4個族群
1:單親媽媽為了照顧小朋友
2:避開家人男友的疑慮(住家裡也是很大的因素)
3:大學生酒店上班兼職(分擔未來的學費)
4:上班族酒店打工兼差(不想放棄白天的本職學能,一方面酒店PT多少增加額外收入)。
經常有人詢問酒店上班:為何有午場呢?
A.一般店家會開設午場的原因:
1.主要就是分攤晚場的營運成本(如房租和水電費用)
2.避免客人和業績幹部的流動(有些消費者會因故提早消費 怕流失到其他店的午場)
所以午場可以說是附屬 各店還是以晚場為經營主力
B.為何午場的生意只是晚場的2~3成呢 原因有以下:
1.一般商務客 於5點下班 7.8點用完餐 大約九點左右到店內消費(這是最單純的消費客層)
2.下午的消費者 可以說十分特別(就如同妳不會凌晨2點去超市買菜一樣... 就是怪!!)
因為午場的消費者較少 所以生意量普遍不高(收入也可能是晚場的2~3成)
C.一般午場八大行業的時段為何?
以下打卡班次:
下午:3點班、4點班、5點班、6點班 (每個班次往後推7小時,就是妳的上班時間)
晚間:7點班、8點班、9點班 (每個班次往後推7小時,就是妳的上班時間)
註:
1.必須把最後一桌坐完(例如客人7點進場消費到10點半 妳要坐到該客人離場 不能中途卡檯)
2.若堅持9點離開公司 則公司於7.8點左右就不會安排妳看檯(對收入有很大影響)
所以許多小姐大都會選擇午場跨晚場 (一星期加班晚場2~3天 該桌結束 可隨時下班) 以增加自己的收入。